Visual Update Roadmap & Announcing Our Art Team

Hello, everyone! dilukha, the game’s new art director, here!

In our last DevLog,  we mentioned that the game would be undergoing a complete visual update. This means remaking many of the existing assets from scratch, including sprites, backgrounds and the user interface. This is, obviously, no easy task. For that reason, we put  together an action plan that would make this feasible and gathered a team of artists who fit the vision we have for the game. 

Now that the dust has settled, we want to share some of what we’ve already discussed and the choices we’ve made, to hopefully give everyone a clearer idea of what the game’s future will be like.

But what’s the Visual Update, actually?

We’ve already talked a bit about what the Visual Update will entail, but not what it will actually look like. As we step into this new moment of development, we took the opportunity to look back at the current state of the game with a more critical eye and reflect, with the benefit of hindsight, on what could be improved on. As a whole, the visuals of the game have many high points — the designs of the characters are extremely charming, their sprites are expressive and nuanced, the unique scrolling patterns for the text box are genius — but improvements can be made. Assets by different artists can clash stylistically, the clean, modern vectors of the UI don’t quite fit the theming of the story, and, as Minoanon mentioned in a previous DevLog, many of these assets were initially conceived as placeholders or include details that have changed as the story has grown. This Visual Update is not meant to be a radically different direction, but rather, a more focused one, that manages to tie all of these loose ends together.

One of our priorities regarding the upcoming art of the game is to create something that truly highlights its mythological and ancient theming. Minotaur Hotel is a story that wears its inspirations on its sleeve, and doing the same with the visuals would, no doubt, elevate it. For that reason, we’ll be moving onto a style that feels very traditional and hand-painted, full of texture and brush strokes, warm palettes reminiscent of the natural pigments you’d see in a worn down oil painting or a fresco on the walls of a temple — something that enhances the atmosphere and pays tribute to the kind of art that inspired this setting. Another aspect that will be emphasized will be the contrast between the ordinary and the fantastical (or as Minoanon once put it, the “magic of the mundane”). The guests the Master meets in the hotel may be fantastic creatures, but they’re still people. Following that line of thinking, the style of the game will be slightly more grounded, more physical: you should be able to imagine them sitting next to you, or how their fur would feel when you run your hands along it. As a point of reference, the promo art that we included in the previous DevLog was meant to be a small taste of what Minotaur Hotel could look like going forward, so you’d do well to keep it in mind (and speaking personally, I’m overjoyed at how well it has been received so far!)

In between all these changes, of course, we’re aiming to maintain familiarity. You won’t end up running into a version of Minotaur Hotel that feels unrecognizable. Readers have grown attached to these characters across the years (which I deeply understand — I started off as a fan myself), and we want you to be able to look at them the same way you’ve always had. 

In general, the goal of the Visual Update is simple: preserve the essence of the story we know and love, while improving where we can. We not only hope, but we’re confident that we can achieve this.

Now, we should move onto how we’re going to achieve this…

The Roadmap

The Visual Update is going to be divided into five phases, each including a certain amount of  remade sprites, CGs and backgrounds. They will also be fully independent from the main story updates and managed entirely by me, so rest assured: they’re not going to interfere with the progress of the game and the writing team will be able to keep going along at their own pace.

Our goal is for each phase to take no more than four months. If everything goes our way, it should take us around a year and a half to finish the Visual Update. However, we’ve arranged them in such a way that most of the high priority assets will be finalized between the second and the third phase, so by the time we get there, it should feel mostly complete (Of course, the gradual nature of this process means that new assets will have to coexist with old ones for some time, so please find it in your hearts to forgive the awkwardness of this period).

Here’s some (not all!) of the stuff that Hotel Basics 1 will include:

• An upgraded resolution of 1920p x 1080p.

• A redesigned user interface.

• Updated sprites for Luke, Kota, Argos, Jean and various NPCs.

• New backgrounds for the Bedrock and the Valley.

• Updated CGs for Asterion’s introduction and his lyre concert.

Hotel Basics 1 is meant to cover roughly the first act of the story, so long time fans will definitely want to revisit it with new visuals, and it’ll be a great time for new readers to hop in as well. It’s scheduled to be released by the end of this year if everything goes smoothly, and we’ll be sharing some progress updates in between, so look forward to it!

Something important I must clarify is that Asterion’s sprites will not be included in the first phase, for various reasons. His sprite is by far the most complex of the cast. For starters; he has three separate sprite sets, all of which have many different outfits, two of which have multiple fur colors and one that has the largest amount of unique poses and expressions in the entire game. It’d be unwise to begin by diving into the most complicated character head first — especially when he’s so important, and when so much of the story hinges on the player character's relationship with him. We want to take our time and gather experience with other sprites before taking him on, so we can make him the best he can be. His sprite’s update will likely be spread out between various phases as well, both due to the sheer magnitude of work it entails, and so we can get some feedback from the readers before committing to a specific vision.

Another necessary clarification is that my role as the new AD was made official after the work on Chapter 20’s CGs started being worked on, so you’re not really going to see my hand in them. The artists chosen to help with that have all done an amazing job, though, so look forward to them regardless!

Now, you might think that the things we outlined as part of the first phase of the Visual Update are still a lot, and that would be true — were it not for all the people behind it. Without further ado, please give a warm welcome to…

Our new Art Team!

Rest assured, we thought very carefully about which artists to include in our lineup, taking into account all the considerations we’ve already mentioned. We’re certain that the artists that now make up our art team are talented, capable and have the skills necessary to carry us to the finish line.

First, let’s talk about sprites. It shouldn’t be necessary to underline how important they are: they’re the visualization of the characters that readers will be in contact with the most during their playthroughs, and they must really evoke their personality and emotions. It was essential to keep them very consistent as, ideally, different sprites shouldn’t clash with each other. For that reason, I wanted to keep the spriting team small, and focused on seeking out artists who had a great range both anatomy and species-wise (including humans!) and who had the rendering skills this direction demands. 

Rayan is one of the artists who will be focusing mainly on this area. The decision to have him be part of the team was pretty much unanimous — this fanart of Themba he did not too long ago should be the only proof anyone needs to know how well his style fits this project. His approach to bodies, rendering and the expressiveness of his characters are just the exact kind of skills we were looking for, so we’re very happy to have him on the team!

Lappan will also be joining our spriting team. His mastery over both anatomy and color and his painterly style made him an excellent candidate for the job. I especially enjoy his reptilian and monster-like characters, of which there are many in the Minotaur Hotel cast — and without spoiling anything, he’s been doing very well with them so far, so we hope you’re just as excited as us to see what he can pull off.

A couple sprites will be handled by different artists, but in large, Rayan, Lappan and I will be in charge of them, and a lot of work is being put into staying in sync with each other to keep them looking cohesive. This is a bit different for our CG artists, though; CGs are special illustrations meant for specific story moments, so they’re very vibe-dependent. While consistency is still crucial, it’s not necessary to be as strict with it as it is with sprites, so CG artists have a bit more leeway to adjust their style based on the specifics of the scene.

Phwog is one of the artists who was chosen for his unique and evocative style! For those unfamiliar, here are some CGs he has done for A Role to Play and for his own VN Depiction of Pleasure. He’s very experienced both with illustration and storytelling, so there are lots of story moments that will undoubtedly be elevated by his work.

Many of you also noticed that ToraGoru was mentioned in our last DevLog as one of the artists that helped with the art for Chapter 20, so you’ll be happy to hear the confirmation that he’s part of the Visual Update team as well! He might just be Asterion’s biggest fan, and the team has always greatly enjoyed his art, so we’re very glad he joined our lineup.

Another of the artists from Chapter 20 that will also be part of the permanent art team is Jax, who not only is a fantastic digital painter on his own, but is also a fan and a longtime friend of ours. He’ll also be focusing mostly on CGs, where his skill with brushwork and environments can shine, and his understanding of the story and characters has proved a great asset to his art so far.

Some of the CGs will be handled by Kinutao, who you may be familiar with, as his art was heavily featured in L’automne. He has a spectacular body of work, not only technically skilled, but suggestive and moody — which is very necessary to preserve the expressive nature of the visuals. He will be handling many of the game’s new backgrounds as well!

And on the topic of backgrounds, Faun will be our main in-house background artist. As soon as we saw their art, their loose and painterly style felt like a perfect fit for the fantastic environments of Minotaur Hotel. Their art will pop up a lot in places that previously were simply royalty-free photos, and it’ll help establish an unique identity for these locations.

Additionally, both Eddio and GigaSaddle, both of whom most of you must already be familiar with (for Kota’s redesign and many of the game’s backgrounds respectively) will still be there for us to provide some art support. BorkThunder, whose backgrounds you may have also seen in many other furry visual novels before (like this one he did for UNDER | HEAVEN), will be helping us during the first phase with some select backgrounds and CGs as well.

We’re very lucky we managed to have gathered such an amazing lineup, and we expect all of you to enjoy what they have in store for the game as much as we have.

I also want to end this DevLog by thanking all of the kind readers that have chosen to help us by joining our Patreon. This Visual Update obviously doesn’t just require a lot of effort on our part, but funds to compensate these artists appropriately. We’re very thankful to everyone that has chipped in so far — everything we’ve managed to raise will be invaluable in terms of keeping the project running smoothly. All of our Patreon members get access to the official Discord server where we’ll share sneak peeks of what’s in the works, do occasional events like AMAs and streams and higher tiers will gain access to unpublished stories and cut content, so if that’s something that interests you, we’d really appreciate the support.

We hope you’re excited for what the art team has in the oven!

— dilukha